Google as the new Microsoft!

[from the NYTimes] Google is no longer perceived as the David that took on the big bad Goliath's of the tech world. In fact, in Silicon Valley, it's being looked upon more as the new Goliath!

Sharing is good!

Fortune (subscription required) takes a look at the strategy behind IBM sharing patents, contributing to the open source community, and helping make technology more open rather than proprietary (all this from the company that used to sell the most proprietary mainframes!).

Fortune article (Intranet version) - Nice; goes into history, and talks about a lot of things, including Infy and Wipro!

An excerpt (something I liked):

Growth in the developing world is a natural part of implementing a "global delivery model" for services, says senior vice president Bob Moffat. In July, Palmisano reorganized services, naming the 49- year-old Moffat one of three executives who will run it jointly. While the other two will oversee the delivery of services to clients, Moffat's job is to find efficiencies. He spent the past three years taking billions of dollars in costs out of IBM's physical supply chain--the delivery of parts and goods to and from factories and on to the customer. His mission now is to cut the cost of delivering services, even high-value ones, by tightening the "services supply chain." That mostly means people--getting the right ones to the right place at the right time. He has to extract every last penny of value from IBM's 260,000 developed-country employees if they're going to stay on the payroll.

Palmisano has picked someone he knows and trusts--Moffat has worked closely with him at almost every step of his career--to oversee what is in effect a redesign of half the company.

The corporate Mr. Fixit rises daily around 4 A.M. to do e-mail and make calls around the world. He works till after 7 P.M. He has an obvious intensity, but simultaneously can be disarmingly casual and interested in whomever he's talking to. That serves him well in his endless dealings with IBM employees, many of whose jobs he is likely to change before he's through.

Sun's been more of a 'sharing' company too.

Did you know that Microsoft even has a centre dedicated to making sure that Windows works well with Linux?? (Microsoft working with Linux?!) Read on.

Leadership - with an IT flavour!

CIO.com has a larger article on Leadership in an IT environment.
Tips include:
1) Building credibilty through accomplishment
2) Speaking the customer's language
3) Building buy-in on the front lines
4) Cultivating champions of change

11 traits of a true leader

From CIO.com:

Ones to Watch honorees—those likely to become the CIOs of tomorrow—need to be good at many things. Critical skills include:

1. Fluency in both technology and the business

2. Ability to work at tactical and strategic levels simultaneously

3. Foresight to connect disparate pieces into cohesive solutions

4. Flexibility

5. Commitment to lifelong learning, with a readiness to stretch beyond core competencies

6. Marketing competence

7. Consummate communication skills

8. Ability to find and manage top talent

9. Vendor management expertise

10. Project management excellence

11. Willingness to delegate

Good leaders

One common trait was found across all winners of a 'Good Managers' contest inside IBM recently. Excerpt:

A study of the shortlisted nominations reveal that the single most popular trait identified as part of successful people management is empowerment of employees.

Be it in terms of empowering with responsibility or investing in their reportees, our winners, have touched their teams with their trust and their drive to enhance the work lives of their employees.

Inspired to work?

It's absolutely important to find work that you truly love doing. The onus to do that (the finding!) rests squarely on our shoulders.

Steve Jobs swears by this! (Searched for his speech, but came across a lot more of the kind!)
Speeches at Stanford.
Jobs' commencement address at Stanford.

[via DD] Ramaraj (Sify CEO) talked about this too. While Jobs says you've got to find work that you're passionate about, Ramaraj sort of hints that you've got learn to well whatever it is that you do.

Also read 'Revenge of the right brain,' by Daniel Pink. Here's where passion, and creativity and all that come in!

Strength in research

IBM Research is the most prolific research organization in the world. These guys don't just sit in labs wearing white coats and working on arcane issues. They're actually helping solve business problems!

Research in the area of Services seems pretty interesting too. IRL's got a satellite centre in B'lore doing just this (Intranet).

IRL tells us a little bit about the kind of work they do.
A Business Standard article.

Supercomputers

[via the NYT]

The US has used its supercomputers mostly for military purposes (the fastest in the world, the IBM Blue Gene/L is at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab).

The Japanese, on the other hand, have used their supersomputers for the following:
1) Climate simulation (the NEC machine)
2) Automobile accident simulations
3) Oil and natural gas exploration

By not restricting the use of supercomputers to only military purposes, and by opening them up for use by other commercial businesses (eg., auto companies in Japan), Japan tries to put its companies in a better position to compete internationally.

Other uses of supercomputers include:
1) Genomic research
2) Drug discovery
3) Cancer Research
4) Studying of complex phenomena such as turbulence, prediction of material properties, and the behaviour of high explosis

Boeing even designed a new plane completely through simulation, without ever building a prototype!

Animation Studios use IBM's help

The animation industry is one that's getting quite a bit of attention in the IT circles in India. IBM's worked with a few cleints (Intranet version!) in this space, and the best thing is that technology today is so accessible that a small company today can take on, and beat, the biggest of imcumbents.

BW covers India and China

[via Rajesh Jain] BusinessWeek has a LOT of articles on India and China - will take long time to get through them all!! But one thing's certain: they'll make for extremely interesting reading.

When Windows Breaks

A feel-good article from Forbes.com. No no, seriously, the feel-good is backed by solid innovation - IBM's Rescue and Recovery with Rapid Restore.

When Windows crashes, and you think your world's gonna end becasue of that, don't worry! (But that's assuming you've got a Thinkpad or a Thinkcentre!!)

Intrapreneurship - and how it works at IBM

In an effort to nurture new businesses, IBM's putting its best and brightest in charge of risky start-ups. India is one such EBO (Emerging Business Opportunity).

Why India (and the other BRIC countires too) are important for IBM:

1) Large, educated, tech-savvy population.
2) Outnumber the number of science and engineering gradutates from the G4 (6MM vs. 4MM).
3) Governments here support open-standards technology such as Linux.
4) Skills in Technology manufacturing, IT and ITeS.
5) Their world-class industry solutions are sold around the world (eg. Flexcube).

Growth rates here vis-a-vis world average:

1) Systems - 7x
2) Software - 3x
3) Services - 2x

Security - everyone's talking about it

Security continues to be a big headache for most big corporations. An IBM survey ranks the most affected sectors: (Intranet version - useful for me!)

1) Government
2) Manufacturing
3) Financial services

How Netscape changed the world

An article from the WSJ (subscription required) marking the 10 year anniversary of the company that had tired to change it all (and probably did!). It's a pity then that Netscape as a company doesn't exist anymore. Nevertheless, I guess it's legacy will continue to live on!

Tech renaissance

cnet news.com covered India's Tech Renaissance some time back.

IBM's well and truly 'in' India

A look at all the different things that IBM does in/ out of India

1) Research lab (one of only 8 in the world)
2) Software labs (not too many of these either)
3) Global Services (Daksh included)
4) Selling to India (I fit in here!)

Lotus Domino/ Notes vs. MS Exchange/ Outlook

Only yesterday did I have a conversation with a friend who was complaing about Lotus!

Here's an article on why I still have faith though! Workplace (the evolution) is pretty good, I hear and read.

Messaging, Collaboration, Workflow, Productivity (OpenDocument, a standard for documents, allows for exchange of data between disparate applications) et al...

Sam Pitroda on Teamwork!

My boss sent the team this article:

Team

Very good article, by the man who started the telecom revolution in India.

Some interesting points on our work culture :
1. "Teams in India somehow tend to focus on achieving total agreement, which is almost always impossible. " - Does this drag us towards mediocrity, as a "safe" option?
2. "Indians do not differentiate between criticizing an idea and criticizing an individual." - True?
3. "Diversifying tasks increases workers' self-esteem and motivation and makes them team players" - An antithesis to the "specialise to succeed" theme?

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THE MAGIC OF TEAM WORK

Here is a very interesting article by Sam Pitroda,Chairman & CEO of World Tel. The article is a bit lengthy but a 'Must' read for all Indians.

(One Indian = 10 Japanese, 10 Indians = One Japanese)

Lack of teamwork and co-operation is one of the most serious problems affecting progress in all areas of India and wherever Indians work worldwide. The key problem in India is always implementation, not lack of policies. We have great policies and ideas about how to do things, but severely lacking teamwork.

When the Japanese came to work in India to develop the Maruti Suzuki car, a joke went around that one Indian was equal to 10 Japanese: Indians were very smart,capable and dedicated individuals. But 10 Indians were equal to 1 Japanese. Indians lacked team spirit and co-operation.

What makes matters even worse is our "crab" mentality- if someone is trying to climb higher and achieve more, the others just drag him down. The signal that the others send out is, " I wouldn't do it; I wouldn't let you do it; and if by change you start succeeding, we will all gang up and make sure that you don't get to do it."

The question is: Where does this attitude come from, and how do we recognize and handle it?

Hierarchical System

Part of the problem is our cultural background. We've had feudal and a hierarchical social system in which whoever is senior supposedly knows best. This was fine in earlier times when knowledge and wisdom were passed on orally; but in modern society, there is no way that one person can know everything. Today, you may find that a young computer-trained person has more answers for an accounting problem than a senior accountant has. Until we understand how best to leverage this diversity of experience, we will not be able to create and fully utilize the right kind of teams.

Sam Patrido: " In my younger days in the US, I attended an executive seminar for Rockwell International, where about 25 senior company executives had congregated for a week for strategic discussion. In the evenings, we would break out into five different groups of five people each. In those group workshops, someone would delegate tasks, saying: " You make coffee; you take notes; you are the chairman; and you clean the board". The next day, there would be different duties for each group member. No one ever said, " But I made coffee twice or I cleaned the board entire day". I thought to myself,if this were happening in India, people would be saying, " But I'm the senior secretary - why should I make the coffee and you be the chairman?" Hierarchy comes naturally to our minds.

What Derails a Team?

Group work requires a thorough understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of individuals irrespective of their hierarchy. Because of our background, we often don't learn how to exercise and accept leadership- to lead and to follow - simultaneously. Some gravitate toward exercising leadership, and others gravitate toward accepting the lead of others. But in true teamwork, everyone needs to do both.

Being a good team player implies respect for others, tolerance of different points of view and willingness to give. The ability to resolve conflicts without either egotism or sycophancy is a very important aspect of being a team player: You have to agree to disagree. I find that people in India somehow tend to focus on achieving total agreement, which is almost always impossible. So before work begins people want everyone to agree on everything instead they should say OK. This is what we agree on, so let's start working on this. What we don't agree on, we will resolve as we go along". For things to move forward,it's important to work on the agreed-upon aspects and not get bogged down in the areas of disagreement. Yet another snake that kills teamwork is people's political agendas. You've got to be open, clear and honest to be a good team player. Most people though, have a hidden agenda - they say something but mean the exact opposite. I call it "split-level consciousness". To say and mean the same thing is a very critical part of a good work ethic.

Criticizing the individual or the idea?

When Sam was working in C-DOT (400 employee size company), If someone had not been doing well, Sam used to tell the person directly to his face in a general meeting. The employees said that was insulting and they should be pulled aside individually to be told of the inefficiency. But in today's world, you cannot afford to do that every time. Besides, Sam figured that criticizing someone in a meeting was for the benefit of all present, and everyone could learn from that individual's mistakes. It was then that Sam learned how Indians do not differentiate between criticizing an idea and criticizing an individual.

So in a group, if you tell someone that his idea is no good, he automatically takes it personally and assumes that you are criticizing him. No one can have a good idea everyday on every issue. If you disagree with my idea, that does not mean that you have found fault with me as a person. Thus, it is perfectly acceptable for anyone to criticize the boss - but this concept is not a part of the Indian System. So from time to time, it is important for an organization's Chief Executive to get a report on the psychological health of the firm. How do people in the team feel? Are they stable? Confident? Secure? Comfortable? These are the key elements of a team's success. For a boss to be comfortable accepting criticism from subordinates, he must feel good about himself. Self-esteem is a key prerequisite to such a system being successful.

Mental Vs. Physical Workers

Another serious problem facing India is the dichotomy and difference in respectability between physical and mental workers, which seriously affects team performance. Mr. Sam had a driver named Ram, who he thought was one of the best drivers in the world. He used to open the door for him whenever he entered or exited the car. Right in the first few days Sam told him " Ram bhai, you are not going to open the door for me. You can do that If I lose my hands". Ram almost started crying. He said, " Sir, what are you saying? This is my job!" Sam told him that I didn't want to treat him like a mere driver. He had to become a team player. Sam told him that whenever he was not driving, he should come into office and help out with office work - make copies, file papers, send faxes, answer phone call or simply read - rather than sit in the car and wait for me to show up.

Diversifying tasks increases workers' self-esteem and motivation and makes them team players. Now, even If Sam calls him for work in the middle of the night, he is ready - because Sam respects him for that he does. Team Interactions unfortunately, when good teams do get created, they almost invariably fall apart. In our system today it is very difficult to build teams because nobody wants to be seen playing second fiddle. It is very hard in India to find good losers. Well, you win some and you lose some. If you lose some, you should move on! You don't need to spend all your time and energy of different cultural backgrounds, religions, ethnicities and caste groups - a fertile ground of diversity in the workplace. We should actually be experts in working with diversity. But it can only happen when we get rid of personal, caste and community interests.

There could be a 40-year-old CEO with a 55-year-old VP. It has nothing to do with age; capability and expertise are what counts. But you don't yet see these attitudes taking hold in India. Managers in the US corporate environment who work with Indians - and in fact, with Asians in general - need to recognize that these individuals have a tendency to feel that they are not getting recognition or are not being respected. It must be realized that these individuals have lower self-esteem to begin with and therefore have to be pampered and encouraged a little more because they need it. This makes them feel better and work better. No Substitute for Teamwork. Teamwork is key to corporate and national governance, and to get anything done.

The fundamental Issues are respect for others, openness, honesty,communication, willingness to disagree, resolution of conflict, and recognition that the larger goal of the team as a whole rumps Individual or personal agendas.

Don't be afraid of pressure. Remember that Pressure is what turns a lump of coal into a diamond.

JP Morgan and Thomas Watson

Did you know that the Federal Reserve was created to replace one man - JP Morgan??!

Thomas Watson Jr., former President of IBM, is also named as one of the most influential businessmen of all time by Forbes.

Jeff Immelt interview

An interview (by Fast Company) with the CEO of my favourite company on campus! Is running business all about people ultimately??

A line from the interview on how you get people pumped up:

"People want to win. And if people think they've been given the capability to win and are with winners, that's how you get people in the game. People who want to build things and like who they work with will stay with us."

What Oracle is doing...

The IT stack of any enterprise comprises of the following (I think!):

1) Systems hardware, at the bottom (Servers, Storage, Networking)
2) Systems software, in the middle (OS, Database, middleware?)
3) Business applications, at the top (enterprise applications like ERP, other legacy application, for other business functions like tracking customer orders or for procurement)

Of the three, business applications are the most important to any IT vendor's clients because this part of the IT stack is the one that's closest to the business user. And it's business needs tha drive IT; IT, at the end of the day, being only an enabler.

So the technology vendors closest to the business side of things are the ones who will drive IT purchsing that can enable savvy businesses to do what they do for customers (ICICI lets me pay my Airtel bills online, for example).

IBM made the decision to exit the business applications space quite some time back. This is because IBM felt that it would have a conflict of interest with the thousands of local partners of IBM who build custom applications for clients on top of IBM hardware and software platforms in their local geographies. Another reason was because the market here is very fragmented too.

Microsoft on the other hand, wants it's business partners to evolve, as it has dcided to get into spaces where only the partner worked before (business intelligence, document workflow, security and managed services). MS wants to standardize most of the business aplications that small companies need to use, thereby squeezing its partners, who were building custom applications on top of MS's platform. MS wants to build packaged applications that companies can use off the shelf, without the busieness partner being involved, therefore their need to evolve.

Oracle too is very focused on the applications space (the top layer of the stack), whereby it would then be in a position to drive the platform strategy (the hardware and software platforms on which the applications run) of any company. Acquiring i-flex, which is the most popular business application for the biggest banks in the world, is a step in that direction (vericalization - banking being an industry group, or a 'verical').

• "Banking is a strategic industry for Oracle with nine out of the top 10 banks already running Oracle ERP applications. i-flex gets us there in banking," said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.

IBM, which makes the platform (hardware and software), but is absent in the business applications space, in a way needs to depend on large players like SAP and Oracle and the thousands of smaller partners to help drive sales of it's servers and middleware software (Websphere, DB2). It is they who decide which platform to use to run their applications. (And it's obviously stupid to expect Oracle to push for anything but it's own database, as a platform on which to run business applications!)

IBM hopes spur demand for it's platform through effective partnering. Also, IBM also has it's mammoth Global Services arm that it can leverage.

It'll be interesting to see how will things will play out in future!!

I've heard this before!

Hey, Wall Street's calling for HP to be broken up into different pieces. Standard line of reasoning: certain parts of the company's business are being used to pump money into others than aren't doing well.

The call for chopping up the company sounds very similar to what was being asked of IBM some 13 years back. Back then, Lou Gerstner decided that IBM derived it's strength from all the different things that it was capable of doing. The whole being greater than the sum of parts.

HP's problem is that it's confused about whether it wants to be a Dell or an IBM. Interesting read (from news.com).

IBM's brand value - Can you explain it?

IBM is ranked the 3rd most valuable brand in the world by BW. But a certain Kiran Mani (very enthu guy in the company) keeps poiting out that IBM is the highest ranked B2B brand. Coke's and Microsoft's products are used by you and me. IBM's aren't, he says!

I've always wondered how the IBM brand is worth as much as it is. I mean, it's a brand that rarely comes in contact with the average person (now that we've sold off ThinkPad to Lenovo, the chances of 'contact' are even more remote).

If you think of IBM as a manufacturer of hardware products (mainframes, and other servers), then these machines are almost never seen by the person walking into office everyday.

Further, more than half of our revenues are generated by the IBM Global Services, our services arm. Even here, there is no tangible product. Only people's expertise is sold here.

BTW, IBM's also a software company (I'm confused over whether it's the 2nd or 3rd largest here). But again, it's not software products that you and I can work with (except for the Lotus brand). It's software that runs under all the user-facing applications, like the database, for example. Yet again, hidden away from the end-user!

How, how then is the IBM brand worth so much??!!

Software to fine-tune inventories

Another BusinessWeek article (yes, I am biased in my reading).

Liked it because it combines all my favourite topics:

1. A business problem - in this case, the amount of all the different types (40,000 in this case!) of spare parts to be held in inventory.
2. A technology solution - powerful software with algorithms that will do this for you!

I shouldn't call it a 'technology solution.' The technology is only used to 'enable' the solution. Strong understanding of the business problem at hand is required first, and then of course, the technical bit.

The solution - using databases, statistical models, and forecasts - reminded me of a 2nd year elective at IIM Lucknow called 'Quantitative models in transportation and telecomunication' (no prizes for guessing that I didn't do well in that particular course!) taught by a gentleman named Prof. Y K Agarwal.

This one's for Prof. YKA!

How important is the CIO?

I thought my first post would be more formal, with an introduction (of myself, who else!), but then I'd like this blog to be a little more meaningful than that!

If it's useful, and is being attended to on a regular basis, that's good enough!

Talking business now: It's been three months since I joined IBM in sales, and I've been pretty disheartened with my limited exposure to the world of the CIO. Here's why:

• The CIO (at least the ones I've seen until now) don't really seem to understand the businesses they work for. My reasoning is that IT in such organizations is used only for mundane things like ensuring that certain basic apps are always up and running. How much of 'business understanding' does one need for that?!
• The CIO (again, only the ones I've seen!) does not seem to have too many technology initiatives for the company. Again, I feel that if you don't undersand what business you're in, what IT initiatives are you going to push for?? One obviously does not have too many ideas on how one can help the business technologically in such a scenario.

So I guess the onus lies on salespersons (and others who belive technology can be pretty damn useful for business) to get the CIO to think a little different.

Here's an article from set of BusinessWeek articles on the relevance of the CIO.

Excerpts:

CIOs that turn in solid results get asked to join CEOs in mapping out corporate strategy and entrusted to manage projects outside of IT.

CEOs are recognizing that, of all the levers they have to implement their strategy, technology can push all those levers. You want to change the sales force? Part of that change revolves around technology. You want to change the supply chain, how much inventory you need to have? That has a technology component as well.

We see CIOs' credibility with CEOs being driven by two factors: One, by how well the CIO runs IT -- are they managing their resources responsibly? Are they providing quality services? Two, by how well IT helps the business to achieve its goals.

On a basic level, is IT meeting its current obligations, such as providing services to users? Then, does the CIO understand the company's strategic direction and are decisions made that support it, as opposed to just making decisions that support IT?

High-credibility CIOs come with a business solution to a problem and a couple of technology options to solve it. Then they enter into a dialogue with the CEO about how to solve the business problem.

One example: IT departments are, generally, pretty good at managing their suppliers, whereas a lot of other parts of the organization don't manage their vendors well. So we've seen CIOs starting to get responsibilities for managing vendors and managing alliances outside of IT. We've also seen CIOs that are good at project management being given responsibility to manage product launches.